At 8:30 a.m. on Friday, December 6, investors will see the U.S. jobs report for November. Economists expect that the economy added 200,000 jobs in the month and that for the unemployment rate will hold steady at 4.2%.
Yesterday, Wednesday, November 27, the report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, had continued the stall that began in May.
Yesterday in social media posts President-elect Donald Trump said that he would impose tariffs on his first day back in office, targeting the United States’ three largest trading partners, of 25% on all goods from Canada and Mexico until drugs and migrants stopped coming over the borders, and an additional 10% tariff on all products from China, saying that the country was shipping illegal drugs to the United States. (The Biden Administration had already imposed its own higher tariffs on China and, in additional, it had kept tariffs on China from the first Trump Administration in effect.)
The Biden administration has proposed making GLP-1 weight loss drugs free for low-income people and retirees who qualify as obese. Expensive drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound, which cost $1,000 a month, would be covered for the 40% of the U.S. population who qualify as obese. Currently, the federal plans only cover the drugs when patients have other conditions caused by obesity, such as diabetes, heart disease. The leading drugs are made by Eli Lilly (LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NVO). Shares of Eli Lilly were up 4.55% today while Novo Nordisk rose 1.50%. The incoming Trump Administration will have to decide whether to move ahead with the plan. You can either think of this as a smart piece of health care policy or an effort to jam up an incoming administration that already faces challenges in devising coherent policy on healthcare. I go with the “jam ‘em up” theory myself.
Today I added Copa Holdings (CPA), an airline stock paying 6.9% to my Special Report. Here’s what I wrote
I expect more temporizing this week on when to sell a market that everyone agrees is too expensive. It’s especially worthwhile checking on potential tax loss sells as we come out of a great 2024 and head into a much less predictable 2025.
Let’s start with the 4.54% yield. And then note that, if you hold a bill to maturity, it is essentially risk free. Compare that combination to gold which has a comparable degree of risk but pays a yield of 0%. Or to a 3-month CD where the average U.S. yield is 1.52% or to a 6-month CD where the average U.S. yield is 1.68%.
Three days after the U.S. election, Redfin, the technology-driven real estate brokerage that does business in 100 markets, raised its projection for the average mortgage rate in 2025 to 6.8%. That’s roughly where the current average 30-year fixed mortgage rate stands now. Other real estate analysts, including Moody Analytics and Capital Economics, expect rates near 7% next year. This is bad news for two reasons.
Health insurers traded higher today, November 20, after President-elect Donald Trump picked TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to head the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for overseeing healthcare coverage for millions of Americans.
Gold will rally to a record next year on central-bank buying and U.S. interest rate cuts, according to Goldman Sachs. The investment bank listed the metal among top commodity trades for 2025. “Go for gold,” analysts said in a note, reiterating a target of $3,000 an ounce by December 2025.
NVIDIA (NVDA) will release its third quarter results after the market closes on Wednesday. Analysts are forecasting over 80% year over year growth in both revenue and EPS. Several Wall Street firms have raised their price targets on Nvidia ahead of its earnings report, citing strong demand for AI chips and the potential for upside surprises. Analysts from HSBC, Oppenheimer, Susquehanna, Wedbush, Raymond James, and Mizuho have increased their price targets, with HSBC setting the highest at $200. The stock closed at $140.15 on Monday, November 18. On the other hand…
The indicator known as earnings-revision momentum— the ratio of upward versus downward revisions to analysis forecast per-share earnings over the next 12 months for the Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks—-has slumped into negative territory and is hovering near its second-worst reading in the past year, according to Bloomberg.
